This thesis will focus on two accounts of causation - Lewis' and Armstrong's, and their approach to absence causation. Lewis accepts absence causation but suffers from what I call the Multiplicity Problem (MP), where too many absence causes are admitted I show that this problem is solved, by enlarge, by his latest theory of causation - Causation as Influence. This solution is set against competing alternatives to avoid MP by accounting for causation with context, contrast, or by reversing Lewis' counterfactual dependence ยท relation. I show that my proposed Lewisian solution is still preferable to these alternatives. I then turn to Armstrong, showing that his rejection of absence causation is inconsistent with scientific realism. Treating causation as pseudo causation fails because the genuinepseudo causation distinction is justified by intuition, and absence causation is intuitively genuine. Accounting for absence causation via the principles of truth making for negative truth is also inadequate because it leaves us with an excessive causal relatum - the entire universe. I conclude that Armstrong should accept absence causation.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:701813 |
| Date | January 2016 |
| Creators | Musyimi, Syano |
| Publisher | University of Bristol |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
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